The Boggle Factor
Seeing isn't always believing!
Why can’t people just accept what the data are telling them when it comes to anomalous research? Sometimes they don’t accept it even when the research is mainstream! In Death as an Altered State of Consciousness, a great book by Bill's colleague Imants Barušs, there's a Feynman quote that describes the problem like this:
There is a possibility: after I tell you something, you just can’t believe it. You can’t accept it. You don’t like it. A little screen comes down and you don’t listen anymore. I’m going to describe to you how Nature is—and if you don’t like it, that’s going to get in your way of understanding it. It’s a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They’ve learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don’t like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with the experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. The theory of quantum electrodynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is—absurd. (Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, 2006)
The exploration of anomalies and their acceptance have always encountered resistance, and likely always will. Bill often talked about this, and as a sociologist and the president of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE), he was well-positioned to comment on this common human experience. The SSE is an organization dedicated to the rigorous study of anomalous experience, and even within its ranks there were limits to what people could accept, regardless of the quality of the data. Bill called this “the Boggle Factor”—or sometimes “the Boggle Effect”—and it refers to the point at which even open-minded individuals cannot accept information that stretches their foundational beliefs about reality. It’s a point in their critical thinking they simply cannot go beyond. Even Bill himself had that line and put certain types of information in the “boggle” drawer! Bill shared this story about his experience with being boggled:
A few years back, a friend of mine told me that a prominent member of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) had privately expressed exasperation at a presentation I had recently made on my healing research. . . . The bottom line was that he thought my results were simply “too much” for him to handle. Once I got the ranting out of my system and became less defensive, it slowly occurred to me that I react in much the same way to many anomalous claims I come across. Some of the presentations at the SSE conferences have left me with that uneasy “too much” feeling.
There are times, places, and information that no matter how open we are, we simply cannot go there. Our way of being in the world gets challenged, our long-held thoughts get challenged, and things are turned upside down. As Bill said, “We enter the unorthodox at our own peril.”
The Boggle Factor begs us to examine our interests, knowledge, and beliefs. This last word—belief—is especially confounding.
On what do we base our acceptance of something? What would cause us to change our mind? Is it research data, personal experience or knowledge, friends or colleagues? These are all questions worth examining.
For more on Bill’s thoughts on this common experience, check out the article he wrote for EdgeScience, The Boggle Factor.
Just yesterday I was sharing ideas for non-allopathic methods for successfully dealing with cancer. The young woman listened intently--because she had asked me for help. However, the next morning I received a curt text stating that she thought about everything and they would proceed with the treatments recommended by the MD cancer-researcher-- and that is all they would consider. I replied that I would send love and healing wishes. I then proceeded, in my own mind, to get so defensive and actually offended by her close-mindedness - that I completely lost my internal peace. I could not fathom her lack of willingness to add modalities that may not have the most published empirical articles, but that might actually help. I mean, I got really upset! Then the beautiful universe sent me this article. I am humbled, chuckling, crying a little, and so very grateful. Thank you for this.
Nice article! I can relate to the Boggle factor as I experienced it while reading John Fuller’s Arigo and Jacobo Grinberg’s Pachita. I guess you’d know that those two healers were channelling spirits to cure people.
I loved reading Bill’s book, especially his distance healing successes! One of the highlights of the book for me was when he mentioned that Ben saw spirits and that he, too, saw them.
There is far more to Reality than we as humans experience through our custom-designed umwelt. I’m currently reading Preston Bennett’s UFO Healings. The world of anomalous healing is truly riveting! Also, thanks for the book recommendation.